The Best in Genre Fiction

Lost Chapters: Ouija Bored

Extracts torn from forgotten books

Ouija Bored

by David Bussell

Barry was a little shit. The kid at school who sold pirate DVDs out of his rucksack and told everyone his uncle was Evel Knievel. So when he started on about having a working Ouija board one night, Jim was more than a little skeptical. Have one he did though. Have one he did.

“It’s not working,” said Jim, pulling his finger from the perfectly inert whiskey glass.

“You’re doing it wrong,” said Barry. “Give it here.”

Barry placed a fingertip on the glass and closed his eyes. He screwed up his forehead in rapt concentration but nothing occurred.

“Forget it,” said Jim. “Let’s play Nintendo instead.”

“What’s the matter?” teased Barry. “Scared?”

“No, it’s just bullshit, that’s all.”

“Yeah? We’ll see about that!” said Barry, and pulled a Swiss army knife from his pocket.

“What are you going to do with that?” said Jim.

“What do you think?” said Barry, and sliced open his own wrist.

Jim leapt to his feet. “Jesus Christ!” he screamed as geysers of Barry’s blood soaked into the shag pile rug.

“See you on the other side, dick,” said Barry, before his eyelids fluttered and he went still.

“Oh my God, oh my God,” Jim babbled, back pressed against the wall so as to get as far as possible from Barry’s body. He went to go for the door but the corpse blocked the way.

Scanning the room for another exit, his eyes fell on the Ouija board as the whiskey glass lurched and skidded across the board. To Jim’s amazement it raced from letter to letter, spelling out a sentence.

“J-I-M-U-D-I-K”

“Jim you dick?”

It was Barry’s shitty spelling alright. His disembodied laughter echoed about the room.

“I’m gonna beat the crap out of you, Barry!” yelled Jim.

“Oh yeah?” came the ghostly reply. “Why don’t you come and get me!”

“Maybe I will!”

“Maybe you should – we’re having a party.”

Huh? “What do you mean ‘we’?”

“Me and all these girls. Nudey girls.”

“There’s nudey girls there?” said Jim, flabbergasted.

He didn’t need telling twice. He slashed his throat with Barry’s Swiss army knife then lay there gurgling blood into the shag pile as his life slipped away.

“Psyche!” said Barry, when Jim arrived on the other side. There were no nudey girls. Because Barry was a little shit.

*****

You can read 98 more of David’s short stories in his book, Bad Endings, availableHERE.